Herman Taft, left, of Tenderloin Housing Clinic and a former resident of the Tenderloin, stands with Tenderloin residents and supporters before marching through the Tenderloin in a call for action against violence and crime in San Francisco, CA, on Tuesday, May, 8, 2007. photo taken: 5/8/07
Mike Kane / The Chronicle **Herman Taft

Photo: MIKE KANE

Herman Taft, left, of Tenderloin Housing Clinic and a former...

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Lyle Cockrum, center, of the Tenderloin, marches with other Tenderloin residents and community organizers through the neighborhood toward City Hall to join the Coleman Advocates Family Budget Agenda press conference in a call for action against violence and crime in San Francisco, CA, on Tuesday, May, 8, 2007. photo taken: 5/8/07
Mike Kane / The Chronicle **Lyle Cockrum

Photo: MIKE KANE

Lyle Cockrum, center, of the Tenderloin, marches with other...

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Tenderloin residents and community organizers march through the neighborhood toward City Hall to join the Coleman Advocates Family Budget Agenda press conference in a call for action against violence and crime in San Francisco, CA, on Tuesday, May, 8, 2007. photo taken: 5/8/07
Mike Kane / The Chronicle **

Photo: MIKE KANE

Tenderloin residents and community organizers march through the...

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Father John Hardin of the St. Anthony Foundation leads a group of Tenderloin residents and community organizers up the steps of City Hall to join the Coleman Advocates Family Budget Agenda press conference in a call for action against violence and crime in San Francisco, CA, on Tuesday, May, 8, 2007. photo taken: 5/8/07
Mike Kane / The Chronicle **John Hardin

Photo: MIKE KANE

Father John Hardin of the St. Anthony Foundation leads a group of...

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Cissie Bonini, left with striped shirt, of the St. Anthony Foundation, enters the Board of Supervisors Chambers at City Hall with Tenderloin residents and community organizers in a call for action against violence and crime in San Francisco, CA, on Tuesday, May, 8, 2007. photo taken: 5/8/07
Mike Kane / The Chronicle **Cissie Bonini

Two years ago, Marilyn "MJ" Isabell began snapping photos of Tenderloin drug dealers and shouting at them to "get off my corner" before giving the pictures to police. For her work, she said, she was assaulted on Oct. 19 by a young man who dislocated her left middle finger and smashed her digital Canon.

"The next day I was back out there," said Isabell, a 61-year-old board member of the North of Market Neighborhood Improvement Organization who has lived in the Tenderloin for the past decade. "Now I don't have as nice a camera."

Isabell was one of about 200 Tenderloin residents and activists who marched Tuesday afternoon to City Hall, where they demanded -- first at a Board of Supervisors meeting and then in Mayor Gavin Newsom's office -- that city leaders devote more resources to crime-fighting in the neighborhood, where four homicides have occurred this year.

Isabell and others said a recent surge of crime and a growing cohesiveness among residents, care providers and merchants had brought momentum for change in a place that has long struggled with high rates of poverty and drug addiction and attracts both drug pushers and users from far outside its boundary.

Marchers paused at sites of recent shootings and said a few words to memorialize each victim. The demonstration was the first public action by a new coalition of groups called The New Tenderloin, or TNT. Leaders did not make specific demands, but spread a petition saying that "we should not be treated as a containment zone" -- a place where a level of crime is tolerated, lest it spread elsewhere.

Randy Shaw, the head of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, summed up the Tenderloin problem this way in a recent essay: "While San Francisco progressives have passed laws to slow gentrification, we have not transformed our non-gentrified neighborhoods into safe and desirable places to live."

San Francisco police officials said the "containment zone" characterization was inaccurate, that officers do their best to keep residents safe in an area besieged by drug dealers who often come from outside the neighborhood to sell their supply and violently protect their turf; in many other neighborhoods, street code dictates that drug dealers live there or have relatives there.

Speaking near the rally to news reporters, San Francisco police Capt. Gary Jimenez, who heads the Tenderloin Police Station, said his officers are doing a "marvelous job" -- but their hard work is obscured by the neighborhood's myriad problems. Raising his voice, he said the city has a "revolving door" justice system that allows too many criminals to escape punishment.

The Tenderloin station covers the smallest area among 10 city police districts, but for the past several years has made the most arrests. So far this year, police have made 1,700 arrests, a slightly higher number than in recent years. Of the arrests, 53 percent have been drug-related, said police Sgt. Neville Gittens, a department spokesman.

The four homicides this year compare with seven in the neighborhood for all of last year.

The demonstrators who gathered Tuesday said the need to cut crime was mounting as more families moved in. However, there are few statistics available on the number of children in the neighborhood. The San Francisco school district said it has not seen an increase in demand in the past five years at Tenderloin Elementary School, where 90 percent of pupils qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

Newsom was not in his office when the marchers filed in and asked a staffer to commit to a face-to-face meeting. Newsom's spokesman, Nathan Ballard, said later that the mayor "agrees we need to devote more resources to the Tenderloin."

That's why, Ballard said, Newsom is seeking state approval to set up a community court, modeled after one in New York City, where a judge would quickly sentence those accused of so-called quality-of-life crimes -- including graffiti writing, aggressive panhandling, prostitution and public urination -- to community service or direct them into treatment.

Supervisor Chris Daly, whose district includes the Tenderloin, called Newsom's court a "campaign gimmick" launched despite the fact that San Francisco already has community courts. The existing system, which is run outside state Superior Court oversight and without judges, has languished; San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris now directs almost no cases to the community courts.

The Tenderloin residents and activists seemed to be split on the community court proposal, as well as the question of whether police should spend time on quality-of-life crimes.